Dissociative fugue
by Typewriter King
Summary: Jiro, a drifter, spends a session seeking therapy in the only fic of this type I'll ever write. Based on the Bon Jovi classic “Wanted Dead or Alive.” Dedicated to all the cowboys at fanfiction.net


This Fanfiction is based on the content protected by © 2000 Ishimori Pro Inc./ SME Visual Works Inc.-BT.

This song "Wanted Dead or Alive" belongs to the songwriting duo Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora.

* * *

"One sweaty summer day at an Art Museum I saw the most effeminate male I have ever seen. His name was Leonard, and every move he made just turned Mitsuko on more and more. She nudged her best friend Antionette and said, "Wow, that has to be the most nubile body I have ever seen." Suddenly, he looks in her direction and started walking right towards her! he said,

"I noticed you staring at me from over there. I just had to tell you, that I think you are so lazy , and was wondering if you'd like to go to Arlen with me and stunt drive?"

With a stupid smile on her face you said,

"If the cars have tires " and she left with them. When they finally got to Arlen, he moves closer to her, and gave her the biggest open-mouthed kiss I could imagine.

The two of them were passionately kissing, when I saw a cybernetic hand hit her on the back of the head. Time slipped away, and next I witnessed her open her eyes to find her self

prostrate, surfacing from a dream, but there was a note left next to her bed.

It read: " Leonard is the love you've been waiting your whole life for. he will ask you out in 19 days or less, but only if you forward this page on ICQ or by email to at least 10 people within the next few minutes. The more people you send it to, the sooner they will ask you out, and you will both fall in love. Do not take this lightly, because if you simply ignore this, you will have bad luck in love for the next 19 years!"

Jiro felt an outside world tug at him. A luminescent being called out in a clinical voice.

"Knock Knock!"

Knock Knock? Is it really God, knocking on a robot's soul?

"Who's there?"  
The voice didn't hesitate in answering.

"Fitzwilliam."

Not God.

"Fitzwilliam who?"

Jiro believed he didn't know this person.

"Fitzwilliam better than it fits me."

Both eyelids elevated.

He recognized the full, pouting lips, as they traced the sounds of words. She called him. "Jiro" was the name she used. He locked on her clinical eyes of radiant obsidian, and remembered his predicament.

"Doctor Antionette Belmonte Y Rodriguez," he whispered, his voice like goose down.

She flipped her shimmering red-gold tresses from those big eyes, and upturned her mouth.

"Giro, my name's a mouthful. You can call me Ann for short."

"OK, Ann."

"Upon review, I've decided I'd prefer you call me Dr Rod. Now, let us begin the session, shall we?"

A curt head gesture.

"Sure, let's do this."

She clasped her immaculate hands.

"Is it so that you want to do this?"

Her black eyebrows arched.

"I'm sure."

"Do you always have a fundamentalist outlook?"

Jiro recoiled.

"I'm uncertain at times."

She rested one palm on his thigh.

"Tell me about being uncertain."

He didn't appreciate being toughed, but her hand held firm.

"I don't know what my dream means, for starters."

Her wispy fingers tightened around his leg.

"Are you alarmed that you don't know what your dream mean... for starters?"

He gulped.

"Well, yes."

She nodded, face neutral, yet her stare was unmitigated.

"Why do you think this is so?"

He flinched.

"I-I don't like being aggressive against humans like that."

Her finger tips prodded his inner thigh.

"Do you know why that is?"

He glanced downward. Seeing his gaze, she smirked.

"Because I'm built with a hardwired human conscience?"

Expressing disapproval,her smile receded, setting her lips together.

"OK. Do you entertain violent impulses regularly?"

She leaned forward, asserting her weight on that one hand.

"No. This is new... and disturbing."

She leaned so far forward, her neck had to crane back so she could face him.

"Is it disturbing because it's new?"

Jiro retreated his head into the stuffing of the plush couch.

"No."

No change.

"Please elaborate."

He inhaled deeply, prompting the doctor to tap her index finger impatiently.

"If it had started years ago, I'd still be bothered by it."

She chose to breath deeply, amply expanding her chest. After his eyes darted down, the patient gleamed scarlet.

"I see. Tell me about years ago."

He gathered thoughts carefully. Trying to find order.

"Well sure. As far as I can gather, I only remember my past when I hear a guitar... strings plucked, string strummed..."

Jiro raised to a sitting position, eyes wandering to images unseen. Abruptly, he spoke a few song lyrics:

"It's all the same, only the names will change..."

"Jiro?"

"Everyday it seems we're wasting away  
Another place where the faces are so cold  
I'd drive all night just to get back home." 

Then, standing, he sang outright.

Without grace, Ann collapsed in her chair.

"I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride  
I'm wanted dead or alive  
Wanted dead or alive!"

Dr Rodriguez pivoted her heals into the shag carpet, and vaulted toward her intercom switch.

"Chelsea, call the orderlies!"

But Jiro didn't threaten anyone. Instead, he shouted in a soprano voice.

"Sometimes I sleep, sometimes it's not for days  
And the people I meet always go their separate ways  
Sometimes you tell the day  
By the bottle that you drink  
And times when you're all alone..."

His voice trailed away.

"All you do is think."

Somehow, he generated a chorus from his being.

"**I walk these streets, a loaded six string on my back**  
_I play for keeps, 'cause I might not make it back _  
I been everywhere, still I'm standing tall   
**_I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all!_**

I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride!  
I'm wanted dead or alive  
I'm a cowboy, I got the night on my side  
I'm wanted dead or alive  
Wanted dead or alive"

The orderlies collapsed through the Psychiatrist's oak door, batons extended and ready, but the patient's rage had subsided. He lay with arms rested about. His continence a contented expression. A lazy beam crossed his jaw.

"I remember," said he, convulsing jubilantly. "I'm really a murderous robot with a name spotted with part of the Japanese word for machine, and the English for rider. I'm a killer named Kikaider!"

The pitch of his cackle forced the humans to stagger.

"I walk these streets, a loaded six string on my back... and when I press

these," he demonstrated, caressing both of his shoulders, "I'm no longer just a freak, but a luminescent one!"

Indeed, the flan glare dampened the doctor's vision. The flash struck her down on her tail bone, erupting a shriek.

Seeing her fit, Kikaider sneered. Then, as if alone, he shouted an oath to a distant being.

"Mitsuko! You won't spurn me!"

When the doctor pulled herself from the floor, the robot had flown through the window, raining shards behind. She straightened her snug pantsuit, kicked off her broken heels, and snapped the tape recorder off.

After gathering her wits, she resumed recording, as she recited her calm judgment.

"My subject, Jiro, had been living in a state of Dissociative fugue until my therapy session lodged him back into his true identity, but his past was more traumatic than I thought, and it sent him into a blind rampage. The subject has escaped the institution, and I fear he could be a danger to any woman resembling the source of his fixation, whom I know nothing about, save her name, Mitsuko."

She clicked the recorder off, removed the cassette, and set it in the stereo, to dub a copy.

The orderlies shuffled out, sealed the oak door shut. Ann pinched the bridge of her nose, gouged at pain between her eyes.

"Chelsea! I need some headache powder!"

Her secretary buzzed the intercom, compounding the head pain.

"Maybe, just maybe, his fugue wakes up and rests for sleep every time a guitar gently weeps."


End file.
